Novelist Ron Carlson traces the earliest inspiration for his new book back to an idea for a simple scene in the small Wyoming town where "Return to Oakpine" is set.

"I knew that Mrs. Brand was going to have to remodel her garage and need help," says Carlson, who will sign the book at Laguna Beach Books today. "And (her son) Jimmy Brand was going to return destitute and in trouble."

So he started writing the book there with Craig Ralston, one of Jimmy's best friends from high school 30 years earlier, helping Jimmy's mother prepare for the arrival of her prodigal son.

"As I wrote those pages, the rest of the book began to suggest itself to me, and I thought it would be a reunion," he says of the way in which the story brings together four old friends: Craig and Frank, who'd stayed in Oakpine after high school, and Jimmy and Mason, who'd taken off for brighter lights, bigger cities.

Like the carpentry work Craig so lovingly tends to over the course of the novel, "Return to Oakpine" is an exceedingly well-crafted book, straight and true as it deftly shifts between half a dozen characters, slowly revealing secrets, past and present, as chapters shift from one point of view to the next.

"It seems at first to be quite promising, because you're going to have these various characters," Carlson says of the ensemble cast he's created here. "But in fact it's demanding. There's the danger of when you move from one character to another you lift the lid off the pot, and the pressure of the story will dissipate."

Like his previous book, "The Signal," this one is set in Wyoming, though the town itself is his own creation.

"I think I chose (Wyoming) because I wanted to have a standalone town," says Carlson, director of the Master of Fine Arts fiction writing program at the University of California, Irvine. "Wyoming is one of the last places for that; so many of the small towns I've known have gotten found out and they sprawl.

"And of course I love the West, because there's always an awareness that you're on the planet. You can always see the horizon on one edge. That's another thing I wanted, just this little world out by itself.

"I established that town and it became a very real place to me, a place that could contain and allow them to sort themselves out," he says. "I was very interested in spending the fall with them" – the book takes place in that season – "and seeing what that would be like."

Oakpine is also where the four friends formed a rock 'n' roll band as high school seniors in 1969, and when they reunite 30 years later they fall back into music as a natural bond and easy renewal of old friendships.

"As I was writing the back story of when they were in high school I realized the band would be part of it," Carlson says. "I was never in a band but music is very, very powerful, and of course these men in 1999 are all about my age then. I wanted that kind of cultural circle, too, the reference to the songs."

Given that his characters are roughly his own age you wonder whether there are parts of Carlson's own history reflected in the imaginary lives of Jimmy and Craig, Mason and Frank.

"As you write you get to be a lot of people," he says. "And in fact you have to be a lot of people. When I think of Craig and his love for construction and handiwork, I know that. I share something with each of those guys. No person is modeled after a real person, but there are parts and there are suggestions."

Jimmy, who fled Oakpine and a shattering tragedy as soon as high school ended, eventually landed as a novelist living in New York City. Back in his hometown for the first time in three decades he ends up coaching Wendy, an aspiring young writer. That combination, writer and teacher, might be what most closely parallels Carlson's own life.

And there might some of him in there, he acknowledges, though where his teaching is specific to each student, writer Jimmy's remains more general. "I wanted his advice to be optimistic and encouraging her to write again," Carlson says.

In one scene between Jimmy and Wendy she's finished reading his books. Almost shaken by how much his words spoke to her she asks him, "How do you know what I'm feeling ... How'd you write it?"

It's a question that made us wonder how Carlson sees the opportunity – or challenge – of forming words and sentences into stories that might evoke specific feelings in readers.

"When you write, your readers don't get to be in the room," he says. "You have to invent the place in such a way, the person who needs to believe the story is the writer. You use your empathy and try to create the thing in a way that convinces you – that's the best way.

"And then much, much later, the way we're talking about it now, the readers come along. It's always sort of surprising to me. You try to write as honestly as you can, and the readers come along later, and make of it what they will."

Novelist Ron Carlson's new novel "Return to Oakpine" explores the reunion after 30 years of four high school friends and band mates in a small Wyoming town. TRACY HALL
"Return to Oakpine" is the new novel by Ron Carlson, head of the MFA program for fiction writing at the University of California, Irvine.

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